Assignment 5: Mood without human expressions

For this assignment, we were required to use 2-4 photographs that depict a certain set of adjectives without using any form of human expression as the subject.

We were given the following sets of adjectives.

1) Peace, serene, calm, harmonious, tranquil
2) Happy, cheerful, satisfied, delighted, joyful
3) Progressive, active, advancing
4) Lonely, abandoned, desolate, solitary
5) Sad, gloomy, miserable, depress, solemn
6) Chaos, disorder, turmoil, mess

Can you guess which mood am I trying to portray with the following pictures?

Update:

For this picture, I was trying to portray the mood of "happy, cheerful, satisfied, delighted or/and joyful". As human expressions weren't allowed for this assignment, I decided to use bright pastel colours to bring out the "happy" mood instead.

I think this relates a lot to how children's toys are usually made with bright, pastel colours. Children playing with toys are usually very happy doing so (unless they start arguing and fighting over toys of course haha...), so there is this natural connection between "happy", "pastel colours" and "children's toys" i guess...

This picture would be the depiction of the theme "sad, gloomy, miserable, depress, solemn". It's actually taken from the perspective of someone staring out of a window grille with broken glass panels.

The worn-down texture of the buildings in the background and the texture and lines of the broken glass panels and window grilles in the foreground add to the gloomy and depressing mood. Perhaps I should desaturate the colour of the grass to bring out the mood in this picture even more. Suggestions anyone?

I had goosebumps while editing this picture haha... I thought something was going to come down from those staircase at any moment. I think it's how the railings of the staircase leads you to the corner of the picture, which leads to nowhere it seems.

Added a bit of saturation to bring out the colour in the background and upped the exposure levels to create "noise" add to the "lonely" and "abandoned" mood haha... perhaps the light coming from the glass panel is too bright and I should adjust the contrast and brightness of that portion of the picture.

This picture would bring out the notion of "isolation" and the "solitary" figure. I desaturated the colours from all other parts of the picture except the arm chair in order to portray this particular "mood" in the picture. Perhaps I can saturate the colour of the armchair even more to create better contrast.

Makes you wonder who sat there before. Or can you imagine someone sitting there? haha.

This picture represents "chaos, disorder, turmoil and mess". Although this was taken at a "warehouse" of a spare-parts collection company (and the parts are actually sorted out into different components), I still felt that this could be a form of "organised chaos".

However, maybe there are too many elements in the picture itself, which distracts the viewer by not giving him/her an area to focus on, but hey, isn't that fitting for this theme? hahaa...

My classmates thought that this picture was a bit "Saw"-like (in reference to the sadistic cult movie haha...) This was actually taken at an abandoned army barrack in Changi but the original picture was not like this at all.

It was via colour treatment that I managed to create this "Holga/Lomo/street photography" feel to the picture. Maybe I should crop away the right portion of the picture to remove the lines of the corner where the walls meet each other.

Assignment 4 - 2nd draft

Ok I think this post is long awaited haha... This is the 2nd prototype of my work on Surrealism. As you can see, I made quite a revamp from the original prototype I came up with.

The idea is still the same of materialism and us being stuck in this never-ending cycle of material pursuits. (On a sidenote: Please do watch "The Graduate" (1967), a film starring Dustin Hoffman for a theme that is quite similar to the one I am depicting)

However, I've put in place a human element this time, with his gaze firmly fixated on the visual elements in front of him. This "frame" that I have placed in front of this person can be interpreted either as a mirror, showing the "reflection" of the person himself; or it can also be viewed as a "frame" which the person can use to peek into a pseudo-society.

I've also slightly adjusted the arrangment of the "wall" and I thought I portrayed the theme of a "labyrinth" pretty okay this time, with the repeated patterns. However, one drawback would be that I am unable to place the money notes on the wall this time around, because it would add to the clutter of the picture.

I'm thinking of incorporating elements from both the 1st and 2nd draft in my final piece of work. Perhaps showing how even the person viewing the photo is also trapped in this "labyrinth" will bring out the theme even better. We'll see how hahaha...

Blog exercise 3

This picture was taken by Arko Datta, an Indian national who has worked with Reuters as a photographer since 2001. It was taken in India after the December 2004 tsunami incident and won the World Press Photo of the Year 2004.

It comes under the category of photojournalism and depicts a woman bent over on a sandy ground, crying over the death of a friend or family member, with her palms turned to the sky. The arm of a tsunami victim can be seen on the left of the image.

This image can be viewed as a representation of realism, where the photographer wants the viewer to look at the image as a portrayal of society at a point in time, like a window. If one were to look at the formal elements of the image, the aspects that catches the eye would be light quality, focus, angle of view, colour and the composition of the image.

The main source of light in this picture would be from coming from natural sunlight as this picture was most likely taken in the outdoors, and it would be highly unlikely that any artificial lighting (except maybe a camera flashlight) would be used in capturing such a tragic moment. The light is coming from the top of the picture and this casts shadows on both visual elements (the victim's hand and the woman) in the photo. The shadows formed are rather harsh and this could be interpreted to serve as a juxtaposition to show how the tsunami was a dark and tragic moment for all those who were affected by it.

All visual elements in the picture are relatively in sharp focus and I feel that Arko Datta chose to do so in order to retain viewer attention on both the facial expression and posture of the crying woman in the picture, together with the outstretched, lifeless hand of the tsunami victim. I feel that both elements need each other in order to create meaning to the picture to tell a story. If either visual element were portrayed on their own, the picture might not evoke as strong an emotion from the viewer than if both were placed together in the same image.

The angle in which this picture was taken is from a top-down perspective. I think this serves to reinforce the isolation of the victim and the woman in the image, perhaps to show the close relationship they had prior to the disaster. Somehow I feel a sense of surreal-ness by look at this picture. The angle of view of this picture makes me feel as if I am looking at an "exhibit" from a third-person perspective. The woman's mouth is open and she was probably crying or wailing in sadness when this picture was taken, but one can only use imagination to figure out how the situation was like.

The colour of the soil dominates in this picture and the colour of the victim's hand seems to blend into the background. Only the attire of the woman provides the more obvious colour elements in the picture. I feel that the lack of colours in this picture creates a "lifeless", seemingly monochromatic mood to the image. Even the colour of the woman's attire is slightly washed out and muted.

The composition of this picture may seem slightly imbalanced at first, with the right side of the image being "heavier" than the left side. However, I feel that this can be explained from ethical and emotional/cognitive aspect of photography. I guess if Datta had included more of the victim's body in the picture, attention would have been drawn away from the emotions protrayed by the lady in the picture. I think it wouldn't be too ethical to show pictures of a deceased person on mass media as some people may find the image too disturbing.

Another explanation for the imbalance created in the image would perhaps be how just the visual image of a dead person's arm can evoke anyone to imagine the presence of a larger "entity" behind the hand to actually "balance" the picture; perhaps to show the scale of destruction of this natural disaster and represent all the victims who died in this tragedy.

Assignment 4 - 1st draft

For this assignment, we were asked to create a work that depicts surrealism through the use of photograms, photo montage or photo manipulation. The theme given was "Urban phenomena/Urban fantasy".

I wanted to use the photo montage technique orginally, but I decided to use photo manipulation instead due to the large amount of distinct visual elements in my final work.

"Labyrinth"

Introduction

The idea behind this work was to capture the urban phenomenon of materialism and juxtapose it in a fantasy form. I did some read-ups and decided to use the Greek legend of the Labyrinth.

The Labyrinth was an elaborate structure designed and built by Greek artificer Daedalus, and the strcture's main function was to hold the Minotaur, a mythical creature that was half man and half bull.

The interesting thing is that the Labyrinth itself was built so cunningly that Daedalus almost could not escape it after he built it. It was only with the help of his friend Ariadne, who passed him a line of thread at the entrance, that Daedalus could exit the Labyrinth successfully.

Explanation

This notion of being trapped and unable to escape fits into the theme of materialism which I was trying to portray. In a modern society, people are usually so obsessed with the seemingly never-ending pursuit of material comfort that they seem to become entrapped in this whole cycle of material pursuit.

I tried to form a "wall of money" using $10 notes and lining them up against the surface of a brick wall to form a pseudo-Labyrinth. As one can see, the "standard 5Cs" (as defined in the Singaporean context of: "Cash", "Car", "Credit card", "Career" and "Condominium") are included in the work created above. This piece of work may be slight Singaporean-centric, but I think the theme of materialism should be pretty universal.

Human and non-human elements are used to create the "Minotaur" in the centre of the Labyrinth. The face is formed using different parts of a car, while the body is in the shape and form of a credit card. The hands and legs were cropped out from those of a human figure.

2nd draft is coming soon!